the lost chapter: Hop Louie and the Stockton Islander (image heavy)

Great research! My dad lived in Stockton in the 1960-70. I'll have to show him this post and pics. I recall visiting the Islander when I was little going back to visit family in Stockton (we moved in 1971).

thanks for the great compliments everyone. having a great group of people back you on these types of projects further motivates us to do more digging in the urban jungle. we really appreciate the positive responses to our post.

quickiki, you hit the nail on the head. there have been swirls of talks about someone maybe scooping up the building and moving it elsewhere. but in reality, even if one had the money to do such a thing, there would be much restoration and repair jobs to perform. it just is not feasible, unfortunately.

i know the antique dealer you speak of quickiki, yet i cannot recall his name. we always referred to him as "chuckles" and he had a huge lot of stockton islander postcards that he found in a dumpster. he closed up shop a couple years ago, but still would show up to sell at the alameda swap meet time to time. as for your question, nope that wasnt us. it was always our intention to do research on the islander to satisfy our curiosities, and then report back all that we found on tc for everyone to see. :wink:

when are we going to be able to coerce you into coming down to our place? :)

hey guys, from time to time my wife and I stumble around Minnie's and/or Modesto. Maybe some Friday or Saturday night we could hook-up (not this weekend though - DUI patrol, you know!). PM me when you'd like to meet sometime or if you're in the Stockton area! :)

and on july 4th, 2007;

finally free to reside in a tiki bar

happy independence day!

Huh? Don't tell me you finally got your hands on it?!?

Hip Hip Fucking Hip Hip Hooray!

Congratulations and all my best!

Psycho Tiki D (I know I am and that is too cool)!

On 2007-07-04 14:04, tikicleen wrote:
and on july 4th, 2007;

finally free to reside in a tiki bar

NO WAY!!!! C'mon out with it, you gotta tell us. That is EPIC!

Chongz

He couldn't have found a better home.
Congrats you two!

YAY! I am so Happy for you.

Congratulations!

It's like the Elgin Marbles

nice story!! and even better pic of the vintage sign.....can you guess what my next sign replica project is going to be now???

I've been reading this thread with great interest--thanks for the research on this lost landmark. It really was a landmark in the true sense of the word. So conspicuously located on Pacific Ave. and different from anything else around it. You really couldn't miss it.

Makes me wish I had appreciated it more, but sadly for me at the time I didn't see it for the special place that was. I was sad to see it moved away though . . .

I'm really happy that the tiki went to someone who can fully enjoy it as one of the last vestiges of this particualr piece of Polynesian-Americana.

I'm sure no tiki in history has been more groped.

Hi Tiki Clean, we are so happy for you. We have visited that pole so many times while having lunch there. We would love to visit it again at your home one day. Here's a bit of information that may or may not be valid any longer. On Pacific Avenue there is a jewelery/pawn shop a few miles north of March Lane. The jewelery part is all old beautiful jewelery and worth a visit. A couple of years ago the husband of the owner told me they had a four foot long outrigger that use to hang from the ceiling in the Islander resteraunt. We tried a couple of times to speak with the wife about buying it but she always had customers for the jewelery and we always gave up. If they still have it maybe you are the one person who could get them to part with it. Good Luck, Wendy

cleen! thats great news ~ i'm suprised i didnt read about it in your blog! so glad its home with you and Hat, where it belongs!

Alright, you can't fool us, time to come "cleen" and let us know what the markup's gonna be when you flip the tiki. Clearly all that research and legwork was merely part of an elaborate resale plan.

Just kidding. If you look closely at the newer photo, I'm pretty sure the tiki has an ever-so-slightly happier and more content expression. Good job, and looking forward to seeing him in his new home someday.

-Randy

thanks for the cheers all around! i need to give a major nod towards ptd and bo for making this happen. if it weren't for them, i'd still be SOL and writing ranty emails about it. which brings me to thank those who put up with said ranty emails (you know who you are), and people who were too kind to run away in terror while i was drinking and ranting about this (you know who you are as well). :)

hey wendy~ thanks for the tip - im on the case! not sure if it will work out, but at least i got to meet a former bouncer at the latitude 20 who is a grandmaster in taekwondo and competed against chuck norris. he was pretty neat, except when we got on the topic of jim kelly.

if anyone finds themselves in the middle of nowhere sometime, you're probably in or near ripon and you are welcome to come visit* it. just drop us a line. zazz.

(*groping optional.)

mmmm, goin' to The Dark Marq Room soon to derinc a FEW world famous Monkey Mai Tai's. Can't wait to see it in it's new home. DIG!!

Any news on the Islander Outrigger? Wendy

I would like to join the chorus of MAHALOs to Tikicleen for this excellent bit of research!

I grew up in Stockton, and remember seeing the Islander as a wee tyke from the back seat of the family car. I never went to the restaurant myself, but I distinctly remember being afraid of the big tiki mask sign out front. This was probably due to the fact that my older cousin told me that it was a cannibal island restaurant, and they served human flesh there. Too bad I was such an impressionable youth, I would have loved to have memories of the inside of such an historic site! (But then, I used to be afraid of the Mobil Oil Pegasus as well... I thought it was a giant horse fly, and a bug that big was frightening to me.)

I was actually quite flabbergasted to find out that one of the locations mentioned is literally around the corner from the house where I grew up (and my parents still live). The Minnies at 140 Harding Way I always knew as Gong Lee's. I was in Stockton this week, took a stroll up the block to Gong's, as it is now called, and snapped a pic.

puamana~ yes! definitely take a picture of that minnie's menu and post it on here. too bad there isnt a date....i never could get a firm answer as to when gong lee took it over.

The sign says "Established in 1957" hopefully this is at all helpful!

I've just been bitten by the tiki-bug, so I'm relativley new to this whole world, but I can feel myself becoming obsessed with the Islander!

Thanks again!

A few years ago I was in LA's Chinatown and took a pic of old Hop Louie's. I noticed that the one in this thread is teensy weensy, and since this is such a great thread and I just retrieved my own image from a three-years-dead laptop (thanks HP :( ) I thought I'd drop it by:

Here are a couple sunset pictures of Hop Louies in LA from a few years ago.

[ Edited by: mrsmiley 2009-02-22 23:08 ]

YAY! Tikicleen reposted a couple of old photos of the Islander on page 3! Quick, everybody, take a look!

Mahalo tikicleen!

Thanks for all of the great information about this place and the photos! I just bought a Wan-fu mug on Ebay for $10 for my wife. We love this stuff!

I grew up in Stockton and lived about 6 blocks from Gong Lee Minnie's. My family seldom went there - it was a little pricey - but I do remember that when you walked through the doors, there were goldfish ponds on either side filled with Koi and elaborately decorated with palm trees and foliage. My dad was a sign painter in Stockton for 50 years* and so I also know that the guy who painted all of their signs was named Glen Martin and had a 1-man shop Stockton for just as long as my dad was there. This guy might be dead now, but he would have pics of the old signage (which was a huge billboard on the the west-facing wall). I live in Seattle now, otherwise I would try to track him down.

*Unfortunately my dad is dead, too, but he was the foreman at Ad-Art Signs from it's start in the 50's/60's through the 1970's. He was involved in large projects - like making the patterns for the Stardust motel in Las Vegas for instance (at the time the largest sign in the US) - so there is a likelihood that he may have been involved with the Islander sign. Alas, it's too late to ask him about it, but In thought it worth a mention. He probably painted the sign at the end of that gang-plank,too, damnit!

Anyhow, thanks for the information and stories. this place is great!

I never got to visit the Islander, but I remember it, awkwardly placed in the parking lot with a K-Mart. I did go to the Polardville Chicken Kitchen; which was a western-themed, audience-involved, vaudille type showplace. It was cheesy.
but the food was okay.

[ Edited by: rico 2009-08-28 14:57 ]

Well here is an update on the Stockton Islander. It was never demolished by who ever bought the land and it's still standing, although it is in super serious disrepair. I went on expedition today, making it passed the guard dog i found a way inside (dangerous!). The place is trashed, its so very sad. It is beyond repair. Almost every thing tiki is gone. The only treasure I found was a plank of wood that is cut tiki style. I hate to be there bearer of bad news but here are some of the pics i took while there.

Long Live The Islander!

Wow, thanks for taking those interior pics - no doubt risking life and limb in the ruins of the building! I thought I was seeing things when I passed by there a month or so ago and saw the building still standing - I also thought it had already been demolished.

Treasure hunting? Risking life and limb? Looks like an exemplary urban archeology expedition to me, with the successful recovery of an artifact to boot! Congrats.

Don't cha just love the big address numbers?! I guess these are big so you don't accidentally walk into the wrong restaurant... especially if you're a fireman coming to put out the fire. :wink: Or maybe you've gutted all the good decor out of the place, so now you decorate with your street address.

Been diggin for Stockton Tiki and managed to come up with some old Islander pics so here goes!

Artist rendering 1963, Architect on the Islander was Waren Wong

Islander construction 1963, 3.5 ton 88ft long beam

Latitude 20 3,500ft addition 1965, built for $90,000

Latitude 20 interior, Hop Louie behind the bar 1965

Pit Bar 1963

Foyer 1963

Hop and Minnie outside main entrance 1963

Lani Room 1963

Exterior 1964

Happy Hunting!
Abstractiki

Thanks for posting the new images, they're great! Where did you find them?

On 2009-10-06 21:22, abstractiki wrote:

Lani Room 1963

I wonder if the Islander's Bumatay mug was based on the tiki in this photo?

Wow those are some great images from a long lost treasure. Great to see what the inside looked liked.

Dig the Barney West tiki out front of Latitude 20.

DC

Fantastic Tiki archeology job Abstract. Great finds. I took the liberty to mess around with a couple of the photos to try and sharpen them up. Sorry about the sepia color but that was the best way to see more detail. Keep up the good work.

Reeeeally nice, David! Love the architect's rendering, and everything else. It would be great to find a better picture of the Bumatay Tiki to get confirmation that it was indeed the prototype for the mug.

Isn't there a computer program out there that "fills in the dots" so that beyond sharpening and saturation, the images become clearer?
And then lets you look into the image holographically, like in Bladerunner? :)

this is mind-blowing david! i am so incredibly estatic that you were able to score these new photos! i had come across photos 2, 3, and 4 through articles that were in the stockton record, but i never had the chance of seeing the others. plus, these are so much more crisp than the crummy low-grade library copies i obtained.

the artist rendering as well as the photo of the bumatay tiki is absolutely fantastic! it is incredible to see more photos capturing the inside of the dark and mysterious islander. i am in love with the artist rendering, especially since i tried to hunt down the original blue prints (good ol' san joaquin county has destroyed everything prior to the 70's). is it just me, or does the bumatay tiki look painted?

i cannot stop pouring over these photos...so much for work getting done today!

[ Edited by: tikicleen 2009-10-08 07:46 ]

On 2009-10-07 08:41, tikicleen wrote:
...is it just me, or does the bumatay tiki look painted?

I thought the bumatay looked painted as well.

Abstract - Is the artist rendering you posted from the newspaper or an actual copy? I don't recall the tall post on the building's right actually being there. That was - roughly - the location of the AdArt sign. The construction photo is priceless.

That post ist most likely the vision of the artist for the sign, perhaps a Tiki totem pole? Obviously too artistic, so they used a more commercial design -which, in retrospect, is just AS artistic as the rendered one. :)

Thanks very much everyone for all your great comments! I do appreciate them! :)

Tikicleen said-

"these are so much more crisp than the crummy low-grade library copies i obtained."

LOL Tiki said-

"Is the artist rendering you posted from the newspaper or an actual copy?"

These are awesome in the sense that we all love the Islander but these are all crummy low-grade copies like tikicleen said. What i did was re-photograph them with my cannon 10-D camera and worked the brightness and contrast over to make them a bit better to see.

I would love to get my hands on the original artist rendering, that would be a treasure find.

LOL Tiki said-

"I wonder if the Islander's Bumatay mug was based on the tiki in this photo?"

Can someone post a picture of the Bumatay Mug for comparison? uummm...I've never seen one.

On 2009-10-07 18:14, abstractiki wrote:
Can someone post a picture of the Bumatay Mug for comparison? uummm...I've never seen one.

Abstractiki,

Love all of your research.

Here's the mug.

DC

Thanks DC!

I made the image you posted more slender, adjusted the contrast, put a film grain filter on it and made the image black and white. Looks like the same artistic vision to me. They probably took a picture of the Tiki and sent it to the mug maker for inspiration. If I only had a 3-D program to rotate the mug image im sure it would match up pretty good! Ok can someone with one of these mugs take a new picture the side angle! :D

similar bumatay was also at Kelbo's: (in the back)

[ Edited by: martiki 2009-10-08 11:57 ]

...and, somewhat similar, at the Sea & Jungle store:

The one in Abstract's photo and the mug share Bumatay's unique "ray-eyes", like in this ceramic satue:

And that makes the photo/mug connection that much more likely. :)

On 2009-10-08 11:56, martiki wrote:
similar bumatay was also at Kelbo's: (in the back)

That's interesting; another element shared by the Islander and Kelbo's was the "Smiley mug" which was apparently based on the post illustrated on the left side of the ad. (I seem to recall seeing the same post in a photo from La Mariana as well.)

That is known as the logo Tiki concept. :D

Oh, and then there is THIS famous example of the Bumatay ray-eyes, of course!:

The one odd thing is that the Islander statue has the rays IN the eyes,

...while the mug and all the other examples have them AROUND the eyes...!!? Oh the perplexing mysteries of Tiki archeology!

Boy they really liked this guy at the Islander! They even put him on the menu!

If the broiler could be saved, the Islander can be saved. Never give up!

1958

2007

2009
http://www.lottaliving.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=8384&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

Unfortunately I think the Islander's structure is too far gone; it would be necessary to start from scratch. As a restaurant, it hasn't existed for 25 or 30 years. It would sure be nice to get the original construction blueprints.

That's right, never give up! You could probably get it for free if you just hauled it a way, if someone had 5 acres and were a handy man or contractor it would be the greatest home tiki bar project. Imagine the Islander in your back yard! .....I know, I know im dreamin again.

Here are a few more pics:

Tommy Lee 1974

The "Hawaii 69 Revue" publicity photo for 1969 Islander appearance

"Nui Nui Evalani" 1969 Islander publicity photo billed as a genuine Polynesian princes

[ Edited by: abstractiki 2009-10-11 18:43 ]